Academy Award Winning Actress and Writer Emma Thompson: “The Domestic Crusaders is exactly the sort of theater we need today. The gulf that separates cultures must be bridged and Art is one of our best hopes. I’ll be supporting this all the way – please join me and Wajahat in building this bridge!”

McSweeney’s will also include the play as part of its excellent, award winning literary journal “McSweeney’s Quarterly #36.” We can’t give away the all the surprises, but readers will be in for a treat. So, if you’re a subscriber you’ll get the play for free! If not, you must subscribe now!

“The Domestic Crusaders is exactly the sort of theater we need today. The gulf that separates cultures must be bridged and Art is one of our best hopes. I’ll be supporting this all the way – please join me and Wajahat in building this bridge!”

If you think the show’s Muslim brouhaha was messy, you should see what’s going on in the neighboring town

Setting: A community town hall meeting for the citizens of EAST PARK, a neighbor of SOUTH PARK, to discuss Comedy Central’s recent censorship of a harmless cartoon portraying Prophet Mohammed due to veiled threats against the cartoon’s creators by two loners named De-volution Islam.

A corpulent child wearing a Savile Row business suit and a red, white and blue ascot climbs onto the stage. He is wearing a shiny American flag pin on his lapel. He steps on a milk carton to stand behind the dais and assumes control of the meeting by slamming his gavel.

KKKARTMAN: Order! Order! By the power vested in me. By myself and all freedom-loving, patriotic, deodorant-wearing, one-true-God-fearing citizens of East Park, I hereby declare moral outrage! Outrage, I say! Why, you ask? WHY?! Because the godless, liberal Benedict Arnolds at Comedy Central have prostrated to the altar of political correctness! They have succumbed to the demands of a legion of intolerant, extremist, Islamist, Muslim fundamentalists whose only logical response to a satirical cartoon lampooning their Prophet is violence, reactionary rhetoric and bad hygiene! Ha! This is what happens when you elect a Muslim president!

Three schoolchildren are seated in the audience. They are friends of KKKartman. They are EVERYMAN STAN, IBN KYLE and COMMON SENSE KENNY. Everyman Stan gets up to speak.

EVERYMAN STAN: KKKartman, dude, I totally understand why you’re pissed off. Comedy Central acted like cowardly tools by censoring artistic expression and betraying the power and value of freedom of speech. But, don’t you think you’re exaggerating the threat and the problem? It wasn’t a legion of Muslims who got upset. Just two nutjobs, called DEVOS, who posted something on their website, De-volution Islam. Most Muslim Americans, like our buddy Ibn Kyle here, understand that art is often used as a necessary vehicle to promote healthy national discussions about culture and politics.

IBN KYLE, the token Muslim, gets up to speak.

IBN KYLE: Thanks, Stan, I just wanted to say —

KKKARTMAN furiously slams the gavel.

KKKARTMAN: Silence! In America — unlike those other places like Falafel-Stan — we tolerate criticism and differing opinions! To prove my point, I’ve invited a world famous expert on Islamism who is thoroughly America-holic! Hearsay Sally!

New Novelist G. Willow Wilson Takes Flight with ‘Butterfly Mosque’

G. Willow Wilson is a comic book author, a novelist, an essayist, and a former journalist. And if that wasn’t enough, she is also the author of the soon-to-be-released autobiography, Butterfly Mosque, story of a young North American’s conversion to Islam and her ensuing romance with an Egyptian man. A convert to Islam, Willow recently took some time out of her schedule to speak to elan about her passion for comic books (check out Willow’sAir series and Vixen!) and her upcoming memoir.

How did you begin your writing career?

My first gig was reviewing music for the Weekly Dig in Boston. I was seventeen and a college freshman at the time. It was a lot of fun. Since I was so young I had to be pretty resourceful, and the experience taught me a lot.

Did you always want to write comic books and graphic novels?

I think the desire to write graphic novels hit when I was in high school and read some of the great literary comics that came out in the 90s–Sandman and Shade: The Changing Man in particular. I figured there must be people who made comics for a living and I set about learning how to become one of them.

I had been in the city of Cairo for less than 24 hours when I had the initial inspiration for the book. I’d never had such an intense, immediate relationship with a place before. The story just started pouring out. I refined it as I spent more time in the city and learned more about its history, but that initial inspiration came from being in a place that is so ancient and has seen so many eras and civilizations and fostered so many incredible people.

Why Not to Marry Rich

Exotic vacations, fancy dinners, little boxes containing sparkly things…sure, dating a successful man has its perks. But if we’ve gleaned anything from watching Carrie and Big’s roller coaster romance, it’s that dating a rich dude comes with its share of headaches and heartaches. And the fact is, there are fewer rich guys to go around these days. That’s because more women than men are graduating from college, so they’re increasingly marrying guys with less education and income than they have themselves, according to a new report released by the Pew Research Center. Plus, fewer women than men have suffered job losses in the recession.

But there’s no reason to lament: “Guys with less cash can actually make women happier, because money and status often breed disloyalty and other negative traits in men,” says Adam Galinsky, Ph.D., a professor of management and organizations at Chicago’s Northwestern University. Here’s why you should give a guy with meager means a chance:

He’s More Likely to Be Faithful

When Tiger Woods apologized, he implied that he felt entitled by his success to have affairs. He’s not alone. Not only does research show that lower-income guys are less likely to stray, but scientists also found that wealthy men are hypocrites about cheating. “People in higher positions are more likely to cheat, yet they condemn others who do it because having money and power evokes entitled feelings,” says study author Galinsky. Continue reading →